Looking back at a basketball coaching career that has spanned 50 years, Clinton girls’ coach Bernie Gaughan still bristles when he remembers his debut.

It was 1963, and he was coaching the boys’ varsity of Little Compton, R.I., against powerful Moses Brown of Providence.

On the opening tap, the Moses Brown right forward went up to dunk the ball, which then hung on the rim long enough for the left forward to go up over the rim and jam it home.

“You couldn’t do a set play slam dunk like that in the pros. That was my welcome to high school basketball,” he said with a wry chuckle. “I just took off my suit coat, sat back and said, ‘This one’s over.’ ”

Little Compton went on to lose the game, 100-68, but Gaughan was nonplussed.

Tonight, a full half-century later, he will be on the bench as his winless Gaels close their season at home against Oakmont. At the same time, he will close the curtain on his lengthy coaching career.

You might think Gaughan would be waxing nostalgic going into the final game of his career, but frankly he’s feeling far too fortunate to be sentimental.

On Dec. 9, the 74-year old Gaughan suffered a stroke in his Clinton home. It came the day after he walked four miles in the morning and then coached his team in a two-hour scrimmage.

To say it quickly crept up on him is a gross understatement.

“I couldn’t understand it, nobody could because there were no signs,” he said. “I had one scrimmage and one game in the preseason before it hit me.”

He was taken to UMass Memorial Medical Center, where doctors found a heart problem. Gaughan underwent open-heart surgery and remained in the hospital for 10 days.

“All the symptoms of the stroke disappeared within 10 minutes after the ambulance arrived,” he said. “Had that not happened, they wouldn’t have known about my heart, so it was actually a blessing.”

After several months of rehab, Gaughan returned to the bench for the first time Thursday night for Clinton’s game against South Lancaster Academy.

Throughout his absence, JV coach John Smith stepped in to coach the varsity while also handling the JV job.

“John Smith coached at both levels and is doing a great job,” Gaughan said. “He’s quite a guy.”

Gaughan is also quite a guy, considering that the Clinton native spent nearly 40 years coaching multiple sports. He served for 20 years as boys’ basketball coach at Clinton, has been varsity girls’ coach for the past 28 years and was inducted into the Massachusetts Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame after a distinguished career on the diamond with the Gaels, amassing a record of 366-199.

He coached boys’ track before that, as well as spending nearly 25 years as a football coach at Assumption College. During that long tenure, he was also director of the Clinton’s physical education program, where he taught for many years at the high school level.

“I coached three sports a year from around 1963 to 2000,” he said.

As an explanation to his staying power, he said, “I didn’t know how to write a letter of resignation, I guess.”

He was a three-sport athlete at Clinton High School and graduated in 1955, having honed his athletic skills under the tutelage of such coaching greats as Bingo McMahon, Marty Gibbons and Smokey Connors.

“I was a senior at 16 years old, and when I graduated I just knew (coaching) was what I wanted to do,” he said. “I went to University of Tampa as a physical education major, but never had a physical education class in my life.”

After two years at Little Compton, he returned to Clinton, where he began a legendary coaching career of his own.

He recalled many sports highlights in his career, including Carlos Nieves winning the New England long jump championship with a record-setting leap of 22 feet, 2 inches in the mid-1960s.

After becoming baseball coach in 1979, he led the Gaels to the 1993 Division 2 state title with a 25-1 record. Clinton beat East Bridgewater with a run in the bottom of the seventh to clinch the championship at Holy Cross’ Fitton Field.

“That was great to win a state championship in baseball at Holy Cross with a number of Clintonians in attendance,” he said, adding. “We always had great pitching.”

He recalled the 1-2 punch of lefty Joe Sawyer and his right-handed brother, Matt Sawyer, as well as Kevin Landy, who “had the best curveball I’ve ever seen at any level.”

Gaughan also remembered Greg Hennebry, who posted a 25-1 record in high school and later pitched at the University of Notre Dame, no-hitting eventual NCAA champion Miami in his pitching debut.

When the subject turned to girls’ basketball, he remembered all-time leading girls’ scorer Marissa Garrity, who tied the single-game record with 47 points.

“She scored it against a particular team and the coach put in the paper she wouldn’t do that again. That was quite a statement,” Gaughan said. “The next time we played them, she came back and buried an NBA 3-pointer with no time left on the clock to beat him again.”

This season, the fortunes have not smiled on Clinton. Besides the loss of their head coach for much of the season, the Gaels struggled until finally winning last night, 60-59 over South Lancaster.

“It’s one of those years where everybody we’re playing seems at the top of their games. This team, most years would be competitive,” said Gaughan. “They work very hard; they just don’t seem they’re able to put the ball in the basket. That’s the name of the game.”

Gaughan’s plan for retirement includes frequently visiting the place he and his wife Ann have up in Maine, where he enjoys “riding around in my boat.”

He also has several grandchildren, whose athletic careers he plans to follow.

“Maybe I’ll sit in the bleachers now instead of the coach’s chair,” he quipped.

And while winning his final game would be nice, it’s not something that Gaughan is dwelling on.

“It would be nice to go out with a win, but it would be nicer for them than me,” he said, noting that his girls’ teams once qualified for districts 25 of 26 years and he also coached six of the seven 1,000-point scorers in Clinton basketball history.

Then again, for a career as distinguished and successful as Gaughan’s, achieving his legacy as one of the legends of Clinton sports isn’t just a certainty.

It’s a slam dunk.

Contact Mike Richard at rich0725@aol.com.

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